Great Gatz

Not being a regular consumer of audio books (I’m more likely to call them “books on tape,” which can’t be right anymore), I was startled recently when I came across an unabridged recording of Orhan Pamuk’s “Snow” in the back seat of a friend’s car and noticed that it ran for sixteen hours. That’s a long time to sit still on a road trip! Of course, few people listen to books, or read them, straight through. That we take breaks, often long ones, and carry what we are reading (or listening to) with us during the rest of the day, is one of the great pleasures of the enterprise. Still, there’s something to be said for extremes. And what’s more extreme than a marathon?

Avid literary marathoners looking for a challenge surely found it with “Gatz,” produced by Elevator Repair Service, which just finished a month-long run at the American Repertory Theater, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over nearly seven hours and a dinner break, the thirteen-member cast reads every word (excluding chapter titles) of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Ben Brantley called the play, which is said to be coming to New York this fall, “one of the most exciting and improbable accomplishments in theater in recent years.” Here’s the synopsis, from the group’s Web site:

One morning in the low-rent office of a mysterious small business, one employee finds a ragged old copy of “The Great Gatsby” in the clutter of his desk and starts to read it out loud. And doesn’t stop.

At first his coworkers hardly seem to notice, but then weird coincidences start happening in the office, one after another, until it’s no longer clear whether he’s reading the book or the book is doing something to him…

The premise celebrates the transformative power of literature, and evokes the stories about Carson McCullers always getting fired from office jobs because she couldn’t help but read at her desk. Brantley describes the experience of watching the play’s lead actor, Scott Shepherd, turn into Fitzgerald’s famous narrator:

By the end, he has become Nick Carraway. So have you. And as can happen when you’re caught up in a book, you’re surprised to discover that so many hours have passed, and that you’re still inside your own body, a bit stiffened from sitting for so long.

While Elevator Repair Service has chosen a stripped-down (if long) and straightforward interpretation of the classic text, it will be interesting to see what Baz Luhrmann does with it. It was announced last week that the Australian film director has acquired rights to the novel, which Brantley notes in his review, has “never been successfully translated to the screen.” (See the beautiful, but meek version with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston from 1974.) Let’s just hope there are no musical numbers, nor any plus signs in the title. While we’re at it, let’s hope that “Gatz” makes it to New York soon.